The Two Princesses of Bamarre (5 page)

Chapter Nine

“S
AY THE END OF
Drualt
, Bella,” Meryl said as Milton tucked the blankets around her. “That will give me heart.”

“Wouldn’t you rather sleep a bit?”

Meryl shook her head emphatically.

She still has some energy, I thought desperately.

“I only hope you aren’t sorry.” Bella reached for the library’s copy of
Drualt
. “You remember that Drualt is only nineteen when his story ends?”

Meryl and I nodded.

At this point in the epic, Drualt and his sweetheart, Freya, were battling the monsters alone. Earlier King Bruce’s army and even ordinary Bamarrians had fought alongside them. Together they had beaten the monsters back to the mountains, the desert, and the forest. But as time passed, people became less willing to risk their lives against monsters that rarely troubled them.

Bella said, “The final episode begins when Drualt and his sweetheart pitch camp outside the walled village of Surmic, in the Eskern Mountains. Drualt goes hunting, and Freya sets off to fish in the Surmic River.”

Meryl’s eyes were closed, but she nodded as Bella spoke. Milton set down his knitting and listened.

Bella continued. “When the hero returns, he hears Freya crying for help. He gallops to the river, where he finds her harried by a dozen gryphons—and not a single villager has come to her defense.

“I will begin to read now.

Meryl opened her eyes and pushed herself higher in bed.

Bella’s voice cracked, and she blew her nose into her handkerchief.

Meryl recited softly. But although her voice was weak, her delivery had as much feeling as ever.

I began to cry. Today the loss of Freya was unbearable.

Bella took up the tale again. Drualt cradled Freya in his arms. He declared his love, and she spoke for the last time, saying she’d known he wouldn’t desert her. Then she died.

Tears streamed down my face. Meryl was crying too. I ran to her and hugged her.

“I don’t want to die,” Meryl sobbed. “I don’t want to die.”

Bella flew to Meryl’s other side. “Don’t cry, sweet.”

“Go on, Bella,” Meryl gasped between sobs. “I want to hear it. . . . Just wait . . . a minute . . . It’s doing . . . it will do me good.”

We waited. I forgot my own tears as we all watched Meryl cry into my shoulder.

After a few minutes she pushed away from me. “I’m all right now. Crying is part of the adventure. Go on, Bella.”

Bella took a moment to find her place. Then she began again.

Drualt killed the remaining gryphons quickly. When they lay dead, the gates of Surmic village opened, and the villagers stepped out timidly. Drualt shook his fist at them.

Bella recited, deepening her voice:

Drualt lifted Freya and turned from the villagers. He began to walk away, bleeding from his many wounds. An old woman hurried and caught up to him. She asked if he would return to their aid in times of need.

Meryl took my hands in hers, and I stroked her wrist with my thumb.

It was odd—I’d never before noticed the likeness between Drualt’s vow and the specter’s prediction of the Gray Death’s cure. Drualt wouldn’t return until the timid went forth with the strong, and the cure wouldn’t be found until cowards found courage. I wished for meaning that could help Meryl, but I saw only coincidence. Still, it was curious.

Meryl began to murmur along with Bella.

Bella closed
Drualt
. Milton wiped his eyes. I would have wiped mine, except Meryl still held my hands, and I didn’t want to pull away.

Chapter Ten

A
FTER THE LESSON
Meryl fell asleep. I went to my bedchamber, where I slumped on my bed, too tired even to cry.

Too tired!
That was how Meryl had felt after she declaimed. I leaped up, terrified.

I ran out into the corridor. I saw Milton in the distance, trundling away from me. I called out to him, and he waited.

“Yes, Princess Addie?”

The elves had seen Trina’s stride and had known she was sick. Milton had watched me run to him, so he’d know by now.

“Milton . . .” I didn’t know how to ask. “Er, I don’t feel sick, but I’m so weary that I wondered . . . I wondered if—”

“You’re not sick with the Gray Death,” Milton said, smiling. “You’re not a bit sick.” When he smiled, his wrinkled cheeks became round as walnuts, and his eyes became slits of pleasure.

“Then why am I so tired?”

“Illness is exhausting, even when someone else is ill.” He reached up and touched my shoulder. “I often see this. People don’t feel safe themselves when one they love is—”

“Meryl won’t die.” I turned and hurried away, almost as fast as I’d run toward him a minute before. When I turned into the next corridor, I slowed down, and then I wandered outside into the garden.

After a few minutes I found myself in the old courtyard where Meryl had declaimed only yesterday. I sat on the wooden bench and looked up at the sky. It was still cloudy, but no rain had fallen. Could fate—or the ancient prophecy—be waiting, weighing Father’s actions, holding the skies in readiness? If he was brave, rain would fall and the cure would be found, but if he wasn’t, the cure would remain hidden and the skies would clear.

I watched a butterfly flit above the grass that poked up between the cracks in the paving stones. The butterfly flew off, and I stared at the ground. I don’t know how long I stared, not thinking, feeling nothing.

Eventually I lifted my head. The afternoon was over. The grapevines and the fountain stood out in the distilled light of dusk. The evening air was chilly, and I shivered.

“Sorcerers’ cloaks are very warm.”

I jumped.

Rhys draped his cloak over my shoulders. “It’s often cold when we fly.”

“Thank you.”

Had he been watching me for long? I wondered. No. Why would he?

I pulled the cloak close. It felt as warm as wool and as soft as velvet.

He came around to my side of the bench. “I have something to tell you. I’ve spoken with Orne, my teacher. I told him that Princess Meryl is sick.”

His teacher knew the cure! I sprang up. “Did he tell—”

“I didn’t mean to raise your hopes.” Rhys looked woebegone. “Orne didn’t know how to help her, but he said, ‘The wind is shifting in Bamarre.’ I asked him what that meant, but he only repeated it. I think it must be something good, because he almost smiled as he said it, and he almost never almost smiles.”

The wind . . . Maybe the shifting wind would bring the rain! And maybe something could be done to help the wind.

“Rhys? Remember yesterday when you made the cloud music and you made rain fall from a cloud? Could you make rain fall everywhere?”

“No. I wish I could. It’s a wonderful idea.”

“Could Orne?”

He shook his head.

“Could all the sorcerers together?”

“If there were clouds everywhere, which there wouldn’t be, and if there were enough sorcerers, which there aren’t. I can draw rain from only a few clouds at a time. Orne can command a mile of clouds, which is amazing.” Rhys looked amazed, but then his shoulders slumped. “But it wouldn’t be enough. I’m sorry, Princess Addie.”

“Never mind.” I sat down again.

“Princess Meryl is extraordinary,” he said. “If anyone can overcome the Gray Death, she can.”

“That’s what I think,” I said, although I no longer knew what I thought. “I wonder if Trina overcame it.”

He didn’t say anything. I turned to him, and his face gave him away.

“She died, didn’t she?”

He nodded.

“Oh.” Poor Trina. I wondered if she had tried my method at all.

“Princess Addie . . .” Rhys spoke rapidly, pacing back and forth across the courtyard. “I just thought of something. The cure prophecy could be fulfilled even if the king fails. It could be fulfilled, and you might not even know it.”

“How?”

“A stranger fifty miles from here could find courage. . . .”

There are hundreds of cowards in Bamarre, I thought. Thousands. “That’s true.”

“What’s more, the rain could fall late at night. It needn’t rain for more than a minute.” He smiled triumphantly.

I smiled back, feeling a bit more cheerful.

His smiled widened. But smiling mustn’t have been enough. He rose three feet in the air.

Then his face changed, and he came down. “It’s late. I must find your father’s camp. He’ll be expecting me.” He bowed, then launched himself. In a moment he vanished into the darkening sky.

The wind is shifting in Bamarre.

The prophecy had to come true sometime. Why not now?

The wind blew cold, and I pulled the cloak tighter. Rhys’s cloak! I still had it. I hugged it to me and left the garden.

The next day was cloudy yet again. Meryl paced ten laps in her bedchamber and then had to lie down. She tried to go to the dining hall at noon but was unable to walk as far as the grand staircase. She failed again to lift Blood-biter using only one arm, but she could still lift it with two.

It was unbearable to watch these minute accomplishments, to smile encouragement, when I wanted to hold her and squeeze her so tightly that my strength would flow into her.

My only consolation was that she was in no pain. She joked grimly that the Gray Death just killed, it never hurt.

Rhys returned early in the afternoon. He reported that Father had quartered the distance to Queen Seema’s castle. He and his retinue had thus far been untroubled by monsters. Father had forgotten his slippers, and Rhys was to bring them that evening.

On Sunday we saw the sun, although a few fluffy clouds remained. I told myself that sunshine didn’t matter so long as there were still clouds.

In the morning Milton asked Meryl and Bella and me if we’d like to hear an elf tale about Drualt.

“Yes, please!” Meryl said, sitting up a bit straighter.

Milton put his knitting down and went to the middle of the room. “We begin all our stories with these words: ‘Good health to you,’ and the same words are the refrain. Here is the tale.” He folded his hands over his little belly and began.

Milton flapped his arms and ran a few zigzagging steps, completely failing to look greedy or fierce. Meryl watched, smiling.

I thought, Thank you, Milton, for giving us a moment that has nothing to do with the Gray Death.

He took up the story again. The gryphons descended. Some feasted on the elves’ picnic lunch, and some devoured the harvest.

I interrupted. “I thought gryphons ate only flesh.”

“No, Addie,” Meryl said. “They eat almost anything.”

Milton continued,

I clasped my own thumb and held it protectively.

The tale went on. Drualt slew several gryphons and held the rest at bay, while the queen and her handmaidens retreated to the queen’s castle.

Meryl laughed, and I did too. Our hero with a swollen toe!

The queen asked Drualt how else she might repay her debt.

Milton bowed. We all clapped, even Bella.

“Did the elves really have a queen named Iola?” I asked.

Milton filled a tumbler with water from the pitcher on the washstand and brought it to Meryl.

“Our queen Seema is descended from Queen Iola, and this tale is true. It’s written in our
Scroll of Days
.”

Meryl and I looked at each other. The elves believed Drualt had lived!

Meryl said, “What do you think, Addie? Do you think it could be true?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There could have been a historical Drualt who helped the elves, but the tales in
Drualt
still might be mostly fable.”

Bella said, “Drualt never had a bunion, and that’s certain.”

“Why not?” Meryl said, laughing again. “He had feet, didn’t he? If he had a bunion, it would have been the biggest and best one in history. I think the whole story is true, and I think it means that everything in
Drualt
is true too.” She beamed at Milton. “Thank you!”

He bowed again and then returned to his knitting.

“Would you like to exercise now?” I asked, hoping that Milton’s story might have fortified her.

She was willing, but she paced fewer laps than yesterday, just eight, and she didn’t even attempt swordplay. Instead she practiced lifting lighter items—a hairbrush, a hand mirror, and her walking boots. At the end she said she was pleased.

When Rhys came in the afternoon, he said that Father’s knights had brought down a gryphon, and there had been jubilation over the killing. He added that the royal party was halfway to Queen Seema.

On Thursday morning, a week after she got sick, Meryl collapsed walking to her wardrobe. Milton had to support her back to bed, with me hovering, aching to help.

She said, “I’ll be better soon, Addie. Sir Gray Death hasn’t won yet.”

I tried to smile, but my expression must have been ghastly.

“Don’t look so gloomy. He won the skirmish for my legs, but my heart and my mind have beaten him back a few times already. He won’t win out over them.”

I tried to believe her, but I didn’t. The child specter had only been cruel when it called this an adventure.

Rhys came late that day, almost at dinnertime. Queen Seema had told Father that she knew no cure, nor did she know where a cure might be sought.

“Where will he go now?” Meryl asked. She was in bed, wearing an embroidered robe over her nightdress. I was in the window seat.

Rhys looked down as he answered, “King Lionel is coming home.”